Shore Song
by SaccharineStoryteller
Summary: Damon contemplates why the love of his life walked out on him exactly one year ago. Original Fiction! I wrote this a while back, so the Damon character is in no way related to Damon Salvatore from Vampire Diaries!


Shore Song

Word Count: 3,675

She was a million different things to him; a million different ideas. She was the light streaming through his window the morning after a terrible night. She was the gust of unexpected wind on a blazing hot day. She was that one song lyric that always seemed to find its way into his head, forcing him to sing along. And he did, for a while.

She was a million different things to him, but _gone _was never one of them. She had been the security in his life for so long, the one constant he could always depend on. It had gotten to the point where he didn't even entertain the idea of her not being around, because that simply wasn't an option. He never thought that he would wake up one morning to an empty bed, missing clothes, and a heavy heart. That's just not the way things worked.

But she _had_ left, the way no one ever thought she would. She packed up all her stuff and went to New York, because where else do you go when you want to escape? It said a lot about her, really, that she went to the most crowded state in the country just for some breathing room. For her, things rarely made sense. People often said that he was the most rational decision she ever made. Maybe that's why she left.

_Damon, you have to know I love you. _This was almost an insult now. To mock him with the words she knew meant so much to him. Because that's what she was doing, ridiculing him. _I love you _didn't mean anything unless your bed was warm at night. _I love you _didn't mean anything to _him_, at least not anymore.

_I'll come back, I promise._ How many days would he have to go through this? How many weeks, months, would he spend in agony waiting for her to follow through on a fleeting assurance? He chastised himself for even wondering if she intended to come back the way she said. Sometimes he wondered why she even bothered leaving him a note at all.

The most dangerous times were at night. Night time was the only time when he had nothing to do but let his mind wander. Often times his dreams were stories, and she was the lead character. The only thing he couldn't quite figure out was whether or not _his_ story had a happy ending.

He missed her; that much was obvious. The feeling of burning loneliness increased with every breath he took without her. Despite his best efforts, he wished for her to make good on her promise. He yearned for her to come back to him, the place she had always said she belonged. He knew it was childish, but he would trade every birthday candle and shooting star he'd ever dreamt on just to wish for the whisper of her breath on his cheek, the fleeting magic of her kiss.

How many times had he been told to forget about her? _Damon, she's gone._ (As if he needed a reminder.) _Damon, you need to move on. You could do way better than wild-child Sarah Welburn. _The way everybody said _wild _reminded him of the way he used to refer to cauliflower. In a little town like Glendale, where children maintained etiquette that would put most adults to shame, _wild_ was an unfathomable insult.

"Damon?" The voice pulled him out of his reverie, startling him enough to jump in the cold September air.

He turned around and saw one of his closest friends since childhood, Craig, staring at him with a worried expression.

"Craig, hey, how've you been?"

Craig clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man, what about you? I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."

"Yeah, I know. I've just been really busy."

Craig nodded understandingly, knowing better than to ask him the unwanted questions. After Sarah left, Damon had felt so destroyed that he became a social recluse for several months. Craig had been one of the only friends to stay by him, realizing the pain of the situation. The others submitted to the little town's infamous gossip train, refusing to be seen with the newest outsider.

Craig glanced at his watch. "It's after eleven. You sure you want to be out here this late?"

Damon rubbed a hand over his eyes, comprehending for the first time that night how tired he truly was.

"I'm heading home, actually. I just got caught up, memories and all."

"I hate to bring it up, but I know that Diane's planning on mentioning it to you, and I don't want you to be caught off guard or anything." Diane was Damon's nosy neighbor, always looking for gossip to spread and secrets to reveal. It was common knowledge that she found some sort of twisted pleasure in talking about the most personal parts of peoples' lives.

Damon nodded, accepting the explanation easily.

"Have you looked at the date at all today?"

He closed his eyes, bringing himself momentarily into the past.

"_Damon, come on!" She laughed, gesturing wildly with her hand for him to follow her as she ran down the sand and into the ocean. _

_She threw her already removed sandals into the beach behind her, letting her feet get soaked by the spray of the surf. The sun was just beginning to set, and there was no one else on the entire shoreline but her, Damon, and the sound of the never ending waves. Sarah closed her eyes and lifted her head up toward the sky. _

_For a moment Damon was overwhelmed by her beauty. Her blonde hair was blowing behind her in the wind, and her lips were stretched as wide as they would go in Sarah's infamous content-smile. Damon looked at her pale skin, lined with thousands of tiny freckles, and was suddenly reminded of the Sun. She was his Sun, for all intents and purposes. He needed her in order to survive. _

_He finally moved closer toward her, mimicking her position. They stood together in silence for a long while, ankle-deep in the Atlantic Ocean. When the darkness finally surrounded them like a comfortable blanket, he reached for her hand. He couldn't see her, but all he had to do was close his eyes to see that wonderful smile stretched tight across her lips again, the one he knew was there. _

"_You hear it?" She whispered. _

"_What?" _

"_It's that song you hear whenever you come to an ocean. The waves and the wind, the spray on the sand; it's almost like a lullaby." _

"_Does it have a name?" _

_She paused, thinking it over. Then, she smiled, he could feel it. "It's a Shore Song." She said proudly, happy she'd picked a suitable name. _

_He laughed quietly. "Does everyone have a Shore Song?" _

"_Oh, yeah," she said seriously, "but not everybody knows they do." _

"_Why's that?" _

"_You can only hear your Shore Song if you truly listen." _

_She sounded so sure of herself that he actually closed his eyes and strained his ears. He heard the waves lapping against the beach. He heard the wind blowing through the trees. He heard the steadied breaths of the woman he loved more than anything in the world beside him. _

"_Is everyone's Shore Song different?" He asked. _

"_Of course." She said matter-of-factly. "Your Shore Song is the music you hear. It's the things you love most in this world, the things you know you couldn't live without if you tried. It's a song you could hear every day until the day you died, and you'd know somehow you'd never grow tired of it." She explained. _

_He heard her even breathing again, and he smiled once in the darkness. _

"_I can hear it." He said blissfully. "I can hear my Shore Song." _

Damon sighed. "How could I forget?"

That night on the beach had been the last night he'd seen Sarah. The next morning he had woken with her side of the bed empty, only a note left in her place. Sarah's leaving had gotten around to all Glendale's residents by the end of the next day. Everyone knew that this was the one year anniversary of Sarah's unexplained departure. Everyone knew, yet everyone had had the good grace to keep their mouths shut all day. (With the exception, of course, of Mrs. Diane Whittaker.) Glendale might have been a chatty kind of town, but they weren't a disrespectful one.

Damon wanted to blame his ongoing thoughts of Sarah recently on the fact that it was such a significant day in both their lives, but he couldn't lie to himself. He knew he thought about her this much on a regular basis. He knew he missed her, longed for her, every second of the past 364 days. This day was no more special.

He sighed heavily, feeling the ache of a long gone face with all his heart. "I'm going to go ahead and call it a night."

Craig smiled one last time, this one more sympathetic than the others. "Alright, man. I'll see you around, okay?"

"Alright. Take care of yourself, Craig."

"You too, buddy." And with that he began the short walk back to his house.

Diane Whittaker was just finishing a cigarette on her porch when Damon walked up the steps to his front door. He could feel her eyes on him the entire time he retrieved his keys and placed the right one in the lock. Just when he thought he was safe, he heard her nasally voice interrupt the silence of their street.

"Good evening, Mr. Reynolds." Damon clenched his teeth. Suckered in, once again. He made a mental note to move as soon as possible.

"Good evening, Mrs. Whittaker. How's Ron doing?"

"Oh, he's just fine, thanks."

Resigned, Damon turned to fully face her. The space in between the two houses was adequate, but the distance between the edges of the two porches was close enough that neither of them had to yell in order to be heard. (Though yelling seemed like a very appealing idea at the moment.) Diane had put out her cigarette and lit another one. She was known around Glendale for being a chain smoker, and if anyone ever doubted that observation, all they had to do was look at the more-than-evident lines around her mouth. Either that, or stick around long enough to listen to the woman cough. But that would mean conversation first, and Damon seriously doubted anyone would willingly submit themselves to the torture of an entire conversation with Diane Whittaker just to prove to themselves that she was an avid smoker.

"So I was talking to the girls today," she began, and Damon inwardly rolled his eyes. _The girls _referred to the only two women in Glendale that gossiped anywhere near as much as Diane, though no one could quite reach her level. Cindy Taylor and Joanna Gregory were their names, if he recalled correctly. "and they were telling me about how long it's been since Sarah left town. I was shocked at first; I didn't realize it had been that long."

"A year to the day." Damon said as politely as he could manage. Any simpleton would have the decency to know not to bring this up.

"Yes, yes. But I wouldn't worry about her too much, dear. Sarah Welburn was nothing but a wild-child. Too crazy for anyone's taste. You could do so much better, Damon, I'm sure of it." She said in her sickly sweet voice.

Unable to resist the urge to protect Sarah, the urge he knew would be there until the day he died, Damon finally spoke up. "I actually loved that most about Sarah, Mrs. Whittaker. I don't really consider her being _wild_ a bad thing. Actually, I think the word you're looking for would be _free_, which is what nobody in this town has ever before achieved. You're all too afraid of your own shadow to even realize that being crazy and fun-loving is a trait we should all _aspire _to have. I wish I could feel half as free as Sarah felt, Mrs. Whittaker. Maybe then I'd have the guts to do what she did and get out of this town. She may not have gone about everything the right or conventional way, but then being predictable was never really Sarah's style. You'd know that if you weren't so busy trash-talking her. But it's you I feel sorry for, because you really missed the opportunity to know quite an amazing girl."

Damon had known he'd gone more than a little overboard with his speech. Then again, the pressure of everyone telling him who Sarah was when he knew her better than anyone else in the world had finally gotten to him, and somebody had to take the brunt of the explosion. Damon was just happy it was Mrs. Whittaker and not Craig.

Diane was staring at Damon with eyes as wide as dinner plates. He was sure she'd never been spoken to in such a manner in her entire life. Even still, Damon was happy he got it out. He'd meant everything he said about Sarah, but even though he envied her for leaving, he still didn't understand why she'd done it without him.

Diane mumbled an incoherent excuse and stumbled quickly into her house. Damon laughed; he knew he'd have to haul his butt over there sometime tomorrow to apologize. He'd blame it on the pain of not having Sarah around, because that wasn't entirely false. Sarah's leaving had caused a domino effect on pretty much every part of his life.

It took about two minutes of Damon being in his house for him to realize that he didn't really want to be there at all. It took him about two more seconds to decide where he wanted to go. That's why he changed, grabbed his keys, got in his car, and started the drive to Crescent Beach.

Upon arriving, the first thing Damon noticed was how clear the sky looked. There were almost no clouds, which meant nothing was obstructing his view of the millions of breathtaking stars. Damon found himself wishing on each and every one of them.

Shoes in hand, he set out to the edge of the beach, right where the sand met the water. Damon closed his eyes and considered how different things had been just last year, when his two feet had been in this exact same ocean, only joined by another pair.

Overcome by the sudden onslaught of emotion this one thought brought to him, he did something he hadn't done in years. He prayed. Damon had never been an overly-religious person, but he went to church from time to time, and he had read the Bible cover to cover on multiple occasions. His mother put him in a Sunday school when he was younger, too. All of that had to count for something with God, right?

"God? Hey, it's…it's Damon Reynolds." He already felt foolish. "Look, I'm sorry I don't pray or go to church as much as I should, but I promise I'll sort that all out later if you just hear me out now. I don't know how things work up there, if you can just hear me all the time or something. If you can, you must have heard the thousands of times I've wished for one thing. I really, really need this favor, God. I need it to survive. It's a girl. Her name's Sarah, but I guess you probably already knew that.

She's the most amazing person in the whole world; I swear to Go—oh, sorry. What I mean is that she's wonderful. She's my sun, I told her that once. I really believe it, too. I need her to live, to breathe. And even though she's not here right now, I can still feel her presence, but just barely. I'm barely surviving here. The memory of her, it's fading away. When it fades, when I lose my sun, I don't know how I'll be able to live.

So you have to help me, because I need to see her again. I know she probably had a good reason to leave, even though I won't admit it to myself. And I know she would probably come back if she wanted to see me, and she hasn't. But I…I need to see her. I love her more than the wind and the rain and the smell of sunlight after a storm and…well, I'm babbling here. I know she had a reason for leaving. But can't you give her a reason for coming back?"

"Damon William Reynolds, you will make excuses for me until the day I die, won't you?" The sound of her voice made Damon turn around so fast he almost got whiplash.

He looked up toward the sky again. "Well, you work fast."

Time hadn't changed Sarah Welburn much at all. The past year had been good to her, if anything. She looked tanner and curvier; the straight line that had once been her body was now more filled out in places. All the right places, Damon noticed fairly quickly. He hadn't thought it possible, but she looked even more beautiful then he remembered her to be. His dreams simply hadn't done her justice.

"Well," Damon replied to Sarah's earlier question, "protecting you has always been a habit of mine."

She smiled. "I kind of like it that way."

He frowned. In all the millions of times he'd imagined her coming back, coming home, he hadn't factored in that he'd want an explanation, but he did.

"Why?" Was all he had to ask. She understood.

"I just…I wanted to get out of this town so bad, Damon. I wanted to go, experience new things, and be _free_. Then we got to talking, and it seemed like all you wanted to do was stay here. You wanted a family, which was great, but I wasn't right for it, at least not then.

"I know it was childish. I know there are a million other ways I could have—should have—gone about leaving. But you know how much I hate goodbyes. I couldn't bear to see your face, watch your heart break. And I know, I know, I'm the most selfish person in the entire world for that.

"But I did a lot of thinking in New York. I figured a lot of things out."

Damon looked at her quizzically, waiting for an answer that would mean she was here, for good, and wanted to stay.

"I _am _ready for those things. I'm ready for a family, kids, and the whole nine yards. The reason I thought I wasn't was because I had never truly thought about it before you. Being away from you made me realize that you're the only person I'd ever want those things with."

Damon smiled in the darkness.

Scared by his lack of response and unable to see his face in the calm shadows, Sarah kept going. "There's no reason in the world for you to take me back, I know. I've done so many things wrong, and I've hurt you. There's absolutely no excuse for that. But you have to know that it was absolutely necessary. I wouldn't have left if it was avoidable. I should have gone about it differently, yes, but it was imperative nonetheless. I loved you then. I still love you now. And I understand if you're not ready yet, not willing to open your heart up to me again. I just needed to know."

"That's why you came back?" Damon clarified.

"That, and the fact that I promised you I would." And there it was. The pull he had always felt toward her was back. He could feel it wash all over him, the sensation of opening himself up so completely to her all over again. The truth had been there all along: Damon had never truly closed his heart to Sarah; he just hid it away for safekeeping until she could come back for it. After all, she was the only person it truly belonged to.

"Please Damon. I need to know." She pleaded quietly. "Can we still be together?"

He turned to face her completely and walked toward her in the darkness. He reached out until he touched her and silently found her face. He slowly ran his fingers across her cheekbones.

He felt her smile in the darkness. He always could feel it.

"I figured some things out, too." Damon said.

She waited.

"It's been you all along." He said. "It's always been you. _You're_ the music I hear. _You're_ the thing I love most in this world, the thing I know I couldn't live without if I tried, because I _have_ tried. _You're_ the song I know I could hear every day until the day I die, and somehow know I'll never grow tired of." She looked at him in the moonlight, and he thought he'd never seen something more beautiful. "You're my Shore Song, Sarah. You've always been my Shore Song."

Overjoyed, she flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. For a while, they just stood in each other's arms. Finally, she pulled her head back and kissed him for the first time in a year and a day.

Afterwards, they moved up the beach and lay down on the soft white South Carolina sand. They held hands and talked about all the things they had missed in the past 365 days, and all their dreams for the future. Then, right as Damon was about to fall asleep holding the love of his life in his arms, he heard her whisper, "You know something?"

He mumbled an incoherent reply, but she knew he was listening. She could feel it. She always could feel it.

"You're my Shore Song, too."

4


End file.
